Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

A Model-Based Approach To The Tempo Of “Collapse”: The Case Of Rapa Nui (Easter Island), Robert J. Dinapoli, Timothy M. Reith, Carl P. Lipo, Terry L. Hunt

Anthropology Faculty Scholarship

Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile) presents a quintessential case where the tempo of investment in monumentality is central to debates regarding societal collapse, with the common narrative positing that statue platform (ahu) construction ceased sometime around AD 1600 following an ecological, cultural, and demographic catastrophe. This narrative remains especially popular in fields outside archaeology that treat collapse as historical fact and use Rapa Nui as a model for collapse more generally. Resolving the tempo of “collapse” events, however, is often fraught with ambiguity given a lack of formal modeling, uncritical use of radiocarbon estimates, and inattention to information embedded in …

The Digital Revolution To Come: Photogrammetry In Archaeological Practice, Matthew Magnani, Matthew Douglass, Whittaker Schroder, Jonathan Reeves, David R. Braun

Anthropology Faculty Scholarship

The three-dimensional (3D) revolution promised to transform archaeological practice. Of the technologies that contribute to the proliferation of 3D data, photogrammetry facilitates the rapid and inexpensive digitization of complex subjects in both field and lab settings. It finds additional use as a tool for public outreach, where it engages audiences ranging from source communities to artifact collectors. But what has photogrammetry’s function been in advancing archaeological analysis? Drawing on our previous work, we review recent applications to understand the role of photogrammetry for contemporary archaeologists. Although photogrammetry is widely used as a visual aid, its analytical potential remains underdeveloped. Considering …

The Integration Of Lidar And Legacy Datasets Provides Improved Explanations For The Spatial Patterning Of Shell Rings In The American Southeast, Dylan S. Davis, Robert Dinapoli, Matthew Sanger, Carl P. Lipo

Anthropology Faculty Scholarship

Archaeologists have struggled to combine remotely sensed datasets with preexisting information for landscape-level analyses. In the

American Southeast, for example, analyses of lidar data using automated feature extraction algorithms have led to the identification of over

40 potential new pre-European-contact Native American shell ring deposits in Beaufort County, South Carolina. Such datasets are vital for understanding settlement distributions, yet a comprehensive assessment requires remotely sensed and previously surveyed archaeological data. Here, we use legacy data and airborne lidar-derived information to conduct a series of point pattern analyses using spatial models that we designed to assess the factors that best explain …

Temporal Systematics The Colonization Of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) And The Conceptualization Of Time, Carl P. Lipo, Terry L. Hunt, Robert J. Dinapoli

Anthropology Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.